Life is strange. I had a wonderful day today: I cleaned, I cooked, I took a long, restorative walk, I wrote a poem, I watched the Red Sox, I enjoyed an Irish whiskey, and watched the sunset as it slid down the bricks of my living room. And then I checked Facebook and saw that a man I’ve known, respected, and loved the ways you can love a person you’ve known via the Internet for decades (in other words, the same type of love you can have for a person you see and speak with daily) is dead. Worse, he’s dead because for a variety of reasons he decided he didn’t want to –or couldn’t– live any longer.
I weep right now for him, his family, his loved ones, his unlived life, for the injustice in our world that enables those lacking empathy and joy to thrive, while some of the most sensitive and intensely alive souls come to a point where the burden becomes too much to bear. I am certainly not immune from occasional doubts and despair, but I’ve been blessed with a love of people and art such that I already lament how when I’m gone it (most likely) all goes with me, so I want to enjoy every second of it while I’m around, and on my worst days, this is enough to sustain me. But I’m also lucky; I can’t pretend to have any intimate acquaintance with serious hardship or the types of struggles (mental, physical) that put a person to the test.
And this need not get to Hamlet soliloquy levels of pathos; anyone sentient who finds existence too difficult to endure is ultimately rendering a judgment on the way we’ve remade the world in our image, and it’s a judgment on our collective failure as a species that we don’t comfort and assist one another while we’re busy collecting toys and trophies and all too often measuring ourselves in all the wrong ways.
My heart hurts knowing now what I did not know, but also recognizing that even if I’d known, I probably couldn’t have helped, no matter how good my intentions. So I’ll say something that feels trite but is truthful: my life is better for having known Stephen Smith; he and I talked about music many times, we exchanged tapes, then CDs, then playlists, and I always admired his intelligence and soul. That soul glows still, because I’m still here, and if I’m alive so is he, and I’ll take everything good I’m capable of preserving and try that much more diligently to do right by him, and all the people who gave more than they got from this world.
